The Cambridge Pro Bono Project is a research centre that draws on the subject-matter expertise of graduate researchers and Faculty experts to produce reports on a wide range of public interest matters. Every year, we invite distinguished speakers to address our researchers, staff, and students at the University of Cambridge.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/ Twitter (https://twitter.com/Cam_ProBono) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CamProBono).

Eileen Dong, a renowned UN Ambassador, distinguished member of the US Committee for Refugees & Immigrants Advisory Board, and expert in combating human trafficking, will explore the critical intersections between UN’s 2030 Global Goals and the ongoing efforts to address gender-based violence and human trafficking. Drawing from her extensive experience and multidisciplinary approach, Ambassador Dong sheds light on the vital role of cross-sector collaborations in addressing human rights violations and gender-based violence.

Serving as the Founder and Executive Director of Hope Pyx Global as well as a consultant for US Center for Countering Human Trafficking, Homeland Security Investigations, Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Dong has committed her work to eliminating abuse, exploitation, trafficking, violence, and torture, while building safe spaces for survivors from all backgrounds. Dong's expertise has been recognized at prestigious events such as the UNODC World Day Against Trafficking in Persons and the OSCE Conference of the Alliance against Trafficking in Persons. Her innovative approaches encourage cross-sector, intergenerational, and multidisciplinary collaborations “glocally”.

Dong has played a pivotal role in advising on the UN's Declaration of Human Rights by the American Youth, aimed at eliminating abuse and exploitation, and participating in the Department of Homeland Security’s Roundtable, offering invaluable insights to enhance policies and programs in investigating human trafficking cases, as well as improving support for survivors. Furthermore, Dong successfully testified in favor of the passage of TX SB 49, resulting in almost tripling the crime victims’ compensation, and the allocation of $1 million for the first Trauma Recovery Center in Texas. Presently, she is engaged in collaborative efforts with international NGOs towards international treaties to end violence against women and girls.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

Additional resources:

Global Goals (Sustainable Development Goals): https://www.globalgoals.org/goals/

Core International Human Rights Treaties: https://www.ohchr.org/en/core-international-human-rights-instruments-and-their-monitoring-bodies

CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (un.org): https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/

Book: "Thank Your Predator: A Guide to Trauma Recovery from Abuse": https://a.co/d/bIkDsuG

Polaris Project: Love and Trafficking: https://youtu.be/1RQTd6WeS2Q

TED Talk: Things You Don't Know about Human Trafficking | Eileen Dong: https://youtu.be/DVrwyvNUzMY?si=axpEJF73kUphK1px

To stay to updated on upcoming events and information: Eileen Dong: https://www.EileenDong.com

Hope Pyx Global: https://www.HopePyxGlobal.org

LinkedIn:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileen-dong/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/hope-pyx-global/

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The Cambridge Pro Bono Project is a research centre that draws on the subject-matter expertise of graduate researchers and Faculty experts to produce reports on a wide range of public interest matters. Every year, we invite distinguished speakers to address our researchers, staff, and students at the University of Cambridge. This year's Cambridge Pro Bono Project Annual Lecture will be delivered by Professor Christine Chinkin and chaired by Professor Surabhi Ranganathan, Professor of International Law and Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.

Professor Chinkin, FBA is the founding Director of the Centre for Women, Peace, and Security and Emeritus Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. During her illustrious career, she has served on the Human Rights Advisory Panel established by UNMIK in Kosovo and as Scientific Advisor to the Council of Europe’s Committee for the drafting of the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. She is Chair of the International Law Association.

In commemorating the recent 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Professor Chinkin will speak to how human rights law has engaged with women as subjects and agents in international law, with a focus on the women, peace and security context. She will share her valuable insights into the historical challenges, current opportunities, and the anticipated contributions of practitioners, academics, and researchers.

https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE is a Crossbench Peer in the UK House of Lords and Chair of 5Rights Foundation. For 30 years, Baroness Kidron worked as a film director, making TV and film dramas and documentaries in the UK and Hollywood. She is best known for directing an adaption of the novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

Baroness Kidron was appointed to the House of Lords, where she takes a particular interest in all things digital. She introduced a ground-Breaking piece of data protection legislation, ‘the Age Appropriate Design Code’, which gives under 18’s a high bar of data protection.

Kidron is the Founder and Chair of 5Rights Foundation, whose mission is to build the digital world children and young people deserve. Most recently, 5Rights supported the UNCRC in drafting General Comment No. 35 on the relevance of children’s right to the digital world. This is anticipated to have global significance on the expectation and duties of States and businesses to children.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see Twitter (https://twitter.com/Cam_ProBono) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CamProBono).

Over the course of its military involvement in the Syrian conflict, the UK Government has claimed that since 2014, some 1,700 British air strikes have only caused 1 known civilian death. Just last week, it was revealed that British forces are linked to the deaths of 86 children and more than 200 adult civilians during the Afghanistan conflict.

The use of airborne explosive weapons by the United Kingdom in recent armed conflicts has created a risk that civilians might be the victims or unintended targets of the UK’s air strikes. By virtue of their operational characteristics and largely indiscriminate area-effects once detonated, airborne explosive weapons have been documented to have a greater potential to cause civilian death and injury than other conventional weapons.

In a report written by Cambridge Pro Bono Project researchers for the London-based NGO Action on Armed Violence, the UK’s obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law as well as domestic public law to investigate, record and report civilian casualties have been examined.

For its first CPP Speaker Series event of this academic year, the CPP in cooperation with Iain Overton, Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence, will discuss the findings of this report together with experts Georgia Edwards, UK Advocacy Officer and Conflict Researcher at Airwars, and Gavin Crowden, Executive Director at Every Casualty Counts.

For more information see: https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk

Caoilfhionn has acted in many of the leading human rights cases in the UK in recent years, including acting for bereaved families and survivors of the 7/7 London bombings and the Hillsborough disaster.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk

The Death Penalty Project is an international legal action charity based at Simons Muirhead & Burton LLP. It aims to use the law to protect prisoners facing execution and achieve fairer and more human justice systems around the world. Saul Lehrfreund MBE has dedicated his career to representing prisoners facing the death penalty in criminal and constitutional proceedings around the world and before human rights courts and other international bodies. He has also participated in expert delegations to Japan, China, Taiwan and India focusing on criminal justice reforms and the potential for restriction and abolition of the death penalty. Saul Lehrfreund MBE is a leading authority on capital punishment and international human rights law and has published and lectured extensively on these topics.

The video featured in the presentation is available at https://deathpenaltyproject.org/knowledge/failed-justice-innocent-on-death-row/

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk

The coronavirus pandemic has driven liberal democracies to forfeit individual liberties of citizens in benefit of the collective well-being of society, thereby giving new colours to fundamental debates long entrenched in the human rights movement worldwide. In the UK, the most relevant corollary of the current crisis for the domestic legal sphere is that the provisions of the Human Rights Act (1998), much attacked by conservative leaders in the past decade, will from now on be discussed in a new light. From anti-vaxxers' freedom of choice to the government's enactment of confusing laws and beyond, the human rights dimensions of the COVID-19 crisis are multiple and far-reaching.

To discuss the most salient human rights aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, the CPP has invited the leading human rights barrister Adam Wagner to participate in our new (virtual) Speaker Series. Adam Wagner is a member of Doughty Street Chambers and has been appointed as Specialist Adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights new Inquiry into the government’s Covid-19 response. He will be giving a talk for 40 minutes and the remaining 20 minutes of the webinar will be dedicated to Q&A.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see: https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

The presentation for this lecture is available at:

https://resources.law.cam.ac.uk/documents/Cambridge_Public_Lecture_Corvino_20_11_2017.pdf

John Corvino is Professor of Philosophy and the incoming Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He is the author of numerous articles, as well as three books from Oxford University Press: Debating Same-Sex Marriage (with Maggie Gallagher, 2012), What's Wrong with Homosexuality? (2013), and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (with Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis, 2017). He has lectured at over 250 campuses on topics of sexuality, marriage, and ethics. Read more at www.johncorvino.com.

For more information on the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

Martha joined Liberty as Director in May 2016. She arrived from Doughty Street Chambers, where she specialised in defending access to justice and the rights of women, children and disabled people. In 2015 Martha co-founded the ‘Act for the Act’ campaign, which put posters on trains, buses and billboards across the country telling the stories of men, women and children who had used the Human Rights Act when things went wrong in their lives. Martha was previously a lawyer at the mental health charity, Mind, and at the Public Law Project.

For more information on the Cambridge Pro Bono Project see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

He spoke about his experiences using law as an instrument of justice for the vulnerable and marginalised, including poor, homeless and landless people, at the Legal Resources Centre, South Africa's largest public interest, human rights law clinic.

Jason has been an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar and was formerly the director of the Constitutional Litigation Unit, Legal Resources Centre (South Africa). He is currently a DPhil Candidate at Oxford, where his research focuses on public interest litigation in South Africa.

Shauneen is a barrister in England and Wales and an attorney in Louisiana, USA, where she represented people facing the death penalty. In 1999 she helped establish the charity Reprieve, remaining on the board until 2006.

In 2006 Shauneen and Aika Stephenson set up Just for Kids Law, a charity that provides 360 degree support and legal representation to vulnerable children and young people in the UK and drives systemic change. In 2015 Shauneen was made an Eisenhower Fellow. She is also a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader,’ and one of NESTA/The Observer’s ‘Britain’s New Radicals.’ She was chosen as a Shackleton Leader in 2011 and an Ashoka Fellow in 2012. Shauneen was shortlisted for Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year and Liberty’s Human Rights Lawyer of the Year.

The talk reviewed some of the great results that have been achieved through immigration litigation, for individuals but also for classes or groups of migrants. Colin then considered some bad results of cause lawyering in immigration law and asks whether litigating immigration issues actually shows respect for and therefore legitimises those laws.

This talk came at a fascinating time given the most major cause-lawyering case of its time, the Article 50 case (Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union), has just been handed down by the UK Supreme Court.

Ivan Hare, barrister at Blackstone Chambers, specialises in freedom of speech, and the line between that and hate speech. He has appeared in these cases in Strasbourg and the top UK courts. In this lecture he shared his experiences at the coal face in this controversial and crucially important area.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project please refer to the website at https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/

Rebecca Hilsenrath is the Chief Executive of LawWorks (the Solicitors’ Pro Bono Group) and the Chief Legal Officer of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Prior to this, she worked at Linklaters and afterwards in the Government Legal Service. She is also a trustee of the National Pro Bono Centre and the Mary Ward Legal Centre and was included in the Times 2012 Law 100 list.

Tim Otty Q.C is one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers. A member of the distinguished Blackstone Chambers in London, he has appeared before domestic and international courts in some of the most high profile cases of recent times. Between 2004 and 2008, Mr. Otty QC was involved in three cases before the US Supreme Court concerning the Guantanamo Bay detentions. Between 2005 and 2009, he appeared before UK’s highest courts in a series of cases relating to evidence obtained by torture and the impact of Article 6 ECHR on anti-terrorist legislation.

In addition to his legal practice, Tim Otty QC is actively involved in a number of domestic and international pro-bono initiatives. He currently chairs the Human Dignity Trust, an organization challenging the criminalisation of homosexuality around the world. He is also a Member of the UK Foreign Secretary's Human Rights Advisory Group and a member of the UNHCR Pro Bono Panel.

Mr Otty QC’s lecture will be of interest to individuals across a wide range of disciplines, particularly in the fields of Human Rights and Civil Liberties, International Public Law, Law and Terrorism, Public Interest Litigation, Law and Sexuality and Comparative Law.